Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Dubai: Opportunity Or Canary

Leveraged positions, forced liquidation, margin selling, growing concern regarding one of the largest companies in the country . . . this is Dubai, right now, and it sounds a lot like the Bear Sterns moment from 2007. Hard to say if it's a much-needed correction after an enormous rally (Dubai was up 108% last year) or a change in risk appetite on the global stage, but Dubai is down 25% in the last six weeks. Keeping an eye on it.

Stateside, the Case-Shiller Home Price Index just came out and the headline looked great, up 1.1%. Under the hood it was a bit different. Among the 20 cities tracked, all saw higher home prices in April, yet growth slowed to 0.2% in April, compared with growth of 1.2% in March. Annual growth posted a sharp slowdown too, with year-over-year home prices rising 10.8% in April - the slowest pace since March 2013 - compared with annual growth of 12.4% in March 2014. 19 of the 20 cities saw annual growth taper in April, including California which has been getting a lot of headlines lately for supposedly being on a tear.

U.S. Consumer Confidence and U.S. Residential Sales come out at 10 am EST.

In Japan, prime minister Shinzo Abe released the "third arrow" of his reforms. What stuck out was the initiative for the government pension fund to invest in Japanese equities. This is rumored to be taking place over here as well, and if true, it's just another sign of desperation rather than a solid fundamental.

The Fib zones for the S&P remain the same: 1973.72-1982.74 above and 1904.72-1910.58 below. There could be a test of 1955 where there is a volume shelf. I'd be a buyer of SPY calls there if things shaped up.

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